The Cold Commands (54 page)

“How convenient. We seem to be up to our eyes in war heroes at the moment. Let’s just hope this one knows better how to behave in the
absence
of war than your dragon-slaying barbarian houseguest.” The imperial gaze flickered back across to Ringil. “You were, I suppose, comrades-in-arms, something like that?”

“Something like that,” Ringil agreed softly.

Jhiral got up. “Well, your comrade-in-arms has managed to set himself
a course for the executioner’s block, I’m afraid. That’s if I can talk Saril Ashant’s grieving family down from their demands for death by the chair or in the Chamber of Confidences. There it is. War hero honor doesn’t cut much cloth, I’m afraid, when you’ve slaughtered another war hero in his own bedchamber. Oh, and, uhm,
outraged the virtue
of his good lady wife into the bargain—apparently. There’s really no coming back from something quite that monumentally stupid. The death warrant is already drawn and signed.”

“That’s unfortunate.” A cold edge creeping into Ringil’s voice now. Archeth shot him a warning glance.

“Isn’t it.” The Emperor had given them his back. He browsed the food on his table, voice elaborately conversational. “Three Guardsmen dead, Archeth. Another two crippled, one probably for life. And this in front of a tavern stuffed with outlander sellswords. It really isn’t what I need right now. I have the Guard Provost screaming for palace support, and I have Kadral Ashant muttering around the court about ungrateful leadership. All because
you
would not have me deploy the Reach.”

“I am sorry, my lord. It seems I underestimated the—”

“Oh,
horseshit
, Archeth!” Fists slammed down on the tabletop. Platters jumped with the force of it. Jhiral spun about, face staining dark, strode at her as if to deal her a blow. “
Horse, Shit!
Do you really think I’m that much of a fool? You
didn’t want him caught
. You thought he’d quit the city, and you wanted him to get a good head start. Well, he hasn’t quit the city, has he?
Has he?
”

He hung three feet away, as if tugged to a halt there on some invisible cable, glaring at her. Down at his side, the ringed fingers of his right hand twitched with suppressed violence.

On her left, Ringil moved—a fractional, indefinable shift of stance, caught in the corner of her eye, more sensed than seen. He was, she knew without needing to see it, watching Jhiral, watching that twitching, imperial hand as it struggled not to curl into a fist. He was gone with it, into the awful, gently amused detachment that presaged the steel song, the only one the Ravensfriend knew how to sing.

She felt the air thicken with implication, felt the balance in the balcony space teeter with it, and begin to tip. If Jhiral made that fist and raised it …

Gil would kill him—she knew it as clearly as if it was already done.

She raised her arms, open admission of guilt, and her left arm hanging just a moment longer than the right, blocking out Ringil and the Ravensfriend’s flow. She hoped it would be enough. She bowed her head to her Emperor.

“You are correct, my lord. The fault here is mine.”

“It most certainly fucking is, Archeth.” A rancid satisfaction in his face and tone, there and just as quickly bleeding away. He cleared his throat, gestured carefully with the hand that had so recently longed toward a fist. “Well, then. No point dwelling on your manifest failings in this, I suppose. It’s left to me, once more, to make the difficult decisions and do the right thing. The King’s Reach are out, Archeth. It’s done. I signed the order an hour ago. They will bring this Dragonbane down, dead or alive, and justice will be done. In the—”

“My lord, if I—”

“
In, the, meantime
, my lady.” He waited to see if she would dare interrupt again, saw she would not, and went on in brisker tones. “The Reach commander will want to interview you for clues as to their quarry’s habits and haunts. Your northern friend here, too, I imagine. Rakan?”

Noyal Rakan jumped. “My lord?”

“Convey the Lady
kir
-Archeth and her noble companion to the King’s Reach barracks wing, with all haste. Taran Alman is waiting for them there.”

“Yes, my lord. At once.”

They turned to go. Archeth at speed, to hide what was in her eyes and the seething urge to speak what boiled behind her gritted teeth. Ringil took a little longer, and his gaze measured the Emperor with speculative calm.

Jhiral saw the look and bristled. “Was there something you wanted to say to me, Ringil Eskiath? Some suit or request, perhaps?”

“No.” Ringil did not move. “None. I believe Your Imperial Shininess has said everything worth saying here. It falls now only to execution.”

Jhiral laughed, but there was an uncertain rising tremor at the edge of it that he could not disguise. Archeth and Rakan both heard it, and both stopped dead in their tracks. The Throne Eternal honor guard heard it, and grew intent.

Ringil spared their stirring a flickered glance, a swift calculation, then he fixed Jhiral again with his gaze.

“Have I amused Your Shininess in some way?”

Jhiral cleared his throat, turned a little to his slaves and soldiers, playing for the gallery. “Well, your facility with our tongue is to be commended, my lord. Quite remarkable in a northerner, truly. But it seems your range in Tethanne is somewhat limited after all. You mean
Radiance.
”

“Do I?” said Ringil tonelessly.

He held the Emperor’s eye a moment longer, as if fixing the imperial countenance in some special place of memory. His lips twisted in a smile as thin as the scar across his cheek. He nodded as if told something by a voice that others could not hear.

Then he turned and walked away.

“SO THAT’S WHAT YOU’VE BEEN DOING FOR A LIVING THE LAST TEN
years, is it?”

“If you mean serving the Burnished Throne and its people to the best of my ability,” hissed Archeth, “then yes, it is. I saw it as somehow more productive than hiding in a mountain backwater, spinning yarns about my heroic exploits for pocket money, and paying the stable boys to fuck me.”

“Well, some of us can’t afford slaves for that particular purpose.”

“Fuck you, Gil!”

Jagged loss of control on her accented Naomic, and a yell that had to carry. They’d jammed to an abrupt halt in the midst of the gardens, barely out of earshot of the balcony and the imperial party, and almost nose-to-nose. Rakan stood by, unable to follow the sudden switch to a foreign tongue, but needing little insight to understand the tone. Ringil sneering now, hungover ill temper flaring, opening his mouth to—

Behind him, something gusted past, keening.

He felt its touch distinctly, like cool fingers on the nape of his neck. He frowned, forgot what he was going to say.

A single leaf spiraled down from above, caught in a blade of sunlight lancing through the trees. He watched it fall, bemused. Sparse morning
light gleamed farther off in the foliage, but it seemed cold and distant. Here, around him, the air was shadowy and cool, and something …

Something was not right.

“If they kill the Dragonbane,” he said, more quietly. “I will put this palace to the torch. You know I will.”

“Yeah,” Archeth snapped, apparently untouched by the cool shift around them. “You and whose army? The war is
over
, Gil. This isn’t Gallows Gap.”

“No. It isn’t as clean.”

“Oh,
give me a fucking break.
” She raised spread palms, struck them to her forehead, a gesture so purely Kiriath, so purely her father, that for a moment he saw Flaradnam’s features stamped across hers in the act. “This is
civilization
, Gil. You know, the thing we were fighting to save? You—you and Egar both—
you can’t just stalk about, steel in hand, murdering your grievances.
”

“That’s right. These days, that’s reserved for the likes of that little prick back there and his cabal. Civilization. Privileges of rank.”

“You had rank, Gil. You threw it away.”

“Yeah. And you clung to yours.”

Her eyes widened. She drew back, as if a jagged chasm had opened up through the paving between them.

“My lady,” Rakan interjected. He looked at Ringil, wet his lips. “My lord. Taran Alman is waiting. The Emperor’s will is clear. We should not delay.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Ringil nodded, switched to Tethanne. “He’s right, Archeth. You’d better not keep the Reach waiting.”

“
We
, Gil.” Urgently, because she could see what was in his eyes. “
We
had better not keep them waiting.”

But he was already moving. Past Rakan with a glance that said all he needed to—the Throne Eternal captain lowered his head and gave him ground. Away from Archeth’s desperate voice, calling him back.

“Gil! Gil, you can’t just—”

“Tell them everything you can dredge up,” he told her, not bothering to use Naomic, not bothering to turn. “The more, the better. Keep them talking.”

“I can’t just let you
go
,” she shouted.

“You can’t stop me.” His voice trailed back to her, oddly faded amid the greenery and growth. “Grashgal and your father saw to that. You know what they wrote on this blade.”

He turned a corner, and was gone.

The morning light seemed to strengthen in his absence.

rackle of embers, bathed in wavering orange glow.

Go easy, Dragonbane. Don’t drown yourself this time. You’re not safe here
.

Egar glowered down into the pipe bowl, let the dark smoke come barreling aboard with its icy-cool cargo of release. He coughed a little with the depth of his draw. Clung to a fading caution for a moment, then let it go.

Not safe anywhere in this fucking city. Isn’t it about time you did the smart thing and just got out of town?

It was, he had to admit, looking that way.

Yeah, but for now …

He’d made for the same pipe house with cold calculation. Close to recent events, but that might work to his advantage—his enemies were almost certainly looking for him farther downriver. He had some sense
of the local streets, too, which would count in a pinch. And they knew him here—just another smelly, derelict veteran in search of cheap oblivion. Nothing to talk about. Go somewhere else, there was no telling if he’d raise a ripple—the chatter-worthy wake of a new vessel through new waters.

It seemed like sense, but he was too shattered to be sure. And his strategic judgment, well,
the less said about that the better right now, Dragonbane
.

But he could still not quite believe how badly things had come unraveled, and with how much violent speed. Could still not believe the way it had gone down, even as he watched the events dance in iridescent memory—collide and coalesce, behind eyelids lowering closed under the cool weight of the flandrijn, rushing in …

THE LIZARD’S HEAD, GAY AND GARISH WITH LANTERN LIGHT, RAUCOUS
bursts of laughter flung out of open windows like the contents of chamber pots. The head itself glistened wetly in its raised iron cage, faint, bandlit silver shifting to brighter, lamplit gold each time the tavern door banged open on the serving wenches and the heavily laden trays they carried. The trestles set outside were full, all seats taken by bulky figures upending tankards and bottles, either in moody isolation or with roars of approval and an eerie kind of unison that resembled a drill. The ground around was littered with discarded edged weapons and packs, and, even this early, the bonelessly slack forms of a couple of unseasoned drinkers who’d overdone it. The tavern had drawn its usual bag of variegated fighting muscle. Eg spotted half a dozen different regimental rigs in the crowd, sown in among the more common black or oatmeal-colored cloaks of uncommissioned freebooters.

The Black Folk Span bulked stark against the stars above, broke the shimmering arc of the band where it dipped earthward.

Egar limped closer, keeping warily back from the light of the hung lanterns and tabletop oil lamps—just another shambling drinker in the gloom. He scanned the lit faces as he moved from trestle to trestle, searching for Harath, listening for the younger man’s raised, excited tones. With luck, he’d find the Ishlinak out here, wouldn’t even have to duck inside the confines of the tavern itself. A quick word and—

“Eg? Fucking
Egar
?”

And of course, like a fool, he lurched around, into the light, at the sound of that familiar voice. Saw Darhan, now on his feet, staring and clearly pretty drunk.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Dragonspanker?” he rasped in Majak. “Don’t you know the City Guard are out after your carcass?”

Heads turning at the trestle behind him.

Egar lurched closer, grabbed the older man by the shoulder and faked a long-lost-cousin embrace. Into Darhan’s ear, he muttered, “Keep your fucking voice down, will you? Yeah, I know. I’m dealing with it.”

He stood back and clapped the trainer on both shoulders, faked a delighted oath and a vague gesture across the river. Then he steered the other man away from his drinking companions, toward the gloom and quiet down by the water’s edge.

“Seriously, Eg.” Darhan, now sobering up with veteran speed. “They got a reward posted and everything. Twenty thousand elementals. Twenty, thousand. You need to get the fuck out of town, man, while you still can.”

“I’m working on that. But I got loose ends.”

“Yeah? Like what?” Darhan spun on him, grabbed him in echo of the two-shoulder clasp Egar had just used. “Look in my face, Eg. Did you hear what I just said?
Twenty, thousand, elementals
. I’d hamstring you and turn you in myself for half that much.”

Locked gazes. Egar’s hand strayed to his knife hilt, he couldn’t help it.

“No, you wouldn’t,” he said tautly.

Darhan flung up his arms, exasperated. “All right, all right, I wouldn’t. But that makes me the single man in this city you can trust right now, and I’m telling you, if they try to draft me for Demlarashan this winter, I won’t even be that. It’s more money than any of us are going to see in a lifetime, Eg.” His anger took a sudden gust upward. “Twenty thousand cold, clinking elementals against one man’s life. Just
think
about that. It’s retirement in style, it’s a villa upriver, a kitchen full of slaves and a tidy little harem wing, cuties out of Trelayne or Shenshenath on tap. It’s that happy fucking ending none of us are ever going to see, Eg. Just like some bullshit kid’s fairy tale. Now what the fuck loose end is worth running against that kind of bounty? And don’t you be telling me it’s a woman.”